‘Six children among 15 dead in Aleppo bombing’

Six children were among at least 15 civilians killed in overnight bomb attacks by government and rebel forces in the divided city of Aleppo, a monitoring group said earlier on Monday.

‘At least nine civilians, three of them children, were killed in barrel bombs (dropped by regime aircraft) in Shaar,’ an eastern district, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Britain-based group, which relies on an extensive network of medical, military and activist sources on the ground, warned the death toll could rise because of the large number of people of seriously wounded.

‘Six more civilians, including three children and a woman, were killed in mortar shelling by rebels’ of the government-held district of Jabiriyeh, the Observatory said. The northern metropolis of Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial capital, has been divided since 2012 into western sectors held by the government and rebel-held areas. Hundreds of people have died in near-daily regime air raids.